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The word “Freedom” is etched on her left arm, an eagle with its wings spread wide, open to the world.

Tammy Marquardt waited more than 17 years for that elusive goal she had inked into her skin, but the wrongly convicted woman is finally free at last.

No longer branded a baby killer. No longer the mother who snuffed the life of her own child.

But until Justice Michael Brown uttered these words: “You are free to go, ma’am,” the trembling 38-year-old woman has been considered all of the above thanks to the flawed testimony of former pathologist Charles Smith that sent her to prison for more than 13 years for murder.

A murder she never committed.

A murder that never even happened.

“My nightmare is finally over,” she told reporters in the bright sunshine, still not quite believing that a short court proceeding has ended her long ordeal. “Now Kenneth can finally rest in peace. It’s been too long.”

Crown attorney Greg O’Driscoll notified the judge the prosecution was dropping the second-degree murder charge against Marquardt and would not be proceeding with the new trial ordered by the Ontario court of appeal in February when it quashed her 1995 conviction.

“Nothing I can say to you today will repair the damage that has been caused to you,” Brown told her. “Nothing I can say can bring back your son Kenneth for whom you still grieve. This has been a terrible ordeal and it is tragic that it has taken so long to uncover the flawed pathology of Dr. Charles Smith that led to your conviction.”

Marquardt sobbed as defence lawyer James Lockyer recounted the October day in 1993 when the young mother found her son tangled in his sheets as he desperately cried out for help. Despite frantically trying to free him, he stopped breathing and was taken off life support a few days later at Sick Kids. Poor, alone and sometimes overwhelmed by motherhood, Marquardt immediately came under police suspicion.

But it was Smith who sent her to prison.

“She was an easy target for Smith and she was an easy target, I fear, for the criminal justice system,” Lockyer told the court.

Smith would testify Kenneth died from asphyxia caused by smothering or strangulation. Marquardt’s defence lawyers tried to argue the toddler, who had numerous hospital visits for epilepsy, had instead died of a seizure.

But considered the God of his field, Smith would win the day and in 1995, Marquardt was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life behind bars.

She always maintained her innocence, but it did her no good. The two sons born to her after Kenneth — one of them while in the notoriously brutal Prison for Women — were seized from her arms within 24 hours of their birth. She has never seen them since. She was at the mercy of her fellow inmates who treated her as a pariah, this tiny, thin woman who looks as tough as a whisper of wind, and she tried to commit suicide several times.

But at long last, the justice system has realized the miscarriage of justice she has endured.

Smith, of course, has been stripped of his medical licence, revealed as the charlatan that he is. His testimony here, as in so many cases, has been completely discredited by other experts who now say Kenneth died of undetermined causes and that an epileptic seizure should never have been ruled out.

“I offer to you, Ms. Marquardt, my deepest expression of regret,” the judge told her. “My fervent hope is that somehow you can pick up the pieces of your life.”

She now has a devoted fiancé, a nine-month-old daughter and the support of friends and family as she battles a drug problem. But as she looks ahead to one day finding and reuniting with her now teenaged sons, no future happiness will ever replace what has been stolen from her.

“It took away a good portion of my life. It took away my life with my children. It took away my ability to grieve,” she said. “It really took a big chunk of my soul.”

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